HARTFORD — A judge last week encouraged lawyers for the estates of a University of Connecticut medical professor, and his wife — who was convicted of killing him, then died by suicide before her sentencing — to participate in mediation over what will happen to their estates, one of the lawyers said.
Judge David P. Gold has declined to dismiss the criminal case against Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi, which would be the usual step to take when a criminal defendant dies, due to concerns about how a dismissal might affect inheritance issues.
Connecticut’s “slayer statute” prohibits a killer from inheriting from the victim. But there is a legal question as to whether that statute would apply if the criminal case against Kosuda-Bigazzi is dismissed, leading to “erasure” of all records of the charges she faced.
Gold was to sentence Kosuda-Bigazzi for first-degree manslaughter and first-degree larceny in state Superior Court in Hartford on July 24, 2024. But hours before the sentencing was scheduled to take place, she was found dead in her Burlington home in what was later ruled a suicide.
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